Metal shim and railway-rail joint



I (No Model.)

w. P. GOULD. METAL. SHIM AND RAILWAY RAIL JOINT.

No. 487,832. Patented Dec. 13, 1892 v Km A CVW maxi UNITED STATES PATENTO FICE.

WILLIAM F. GOULD, OF DES MOINES, IOWA.

METAL SHIM AND RAILWAY-RAIL JOINT.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 487,832, dated December13, 1892.

Application filed March 26, 1890.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM F. GOULD, a citizen of the United States ofAmerica, and a resident of Des Moines, in the county of Polk and Stateof Iowa, have invented a new and useful Shim for Railway-Rail Joints, ofwhich the following is a specification.

My object is to provide a simple practical means to compensate for thewear of the abutting ends of rails and their connecting-irons and toreinforce a railway-rail joint when worn and weak from the tread of thewheels of trains passing over the track and joint.

My invention consists in the construction, application, and use of ashim, as hereinafter set forth, pointed out in my claim, and illustratedin the accompanying drawings, in which- Figure 1 is a perspective viewof the shim; and Fig. 2, a transverse sectional view of a rail-joint,showing shims in position as required for practical use.

The shim is preferably made of plate metal and adapted in shape tooverlap the side faces of the webs and the under sides of the balls ofthe rails of the end portions of two abutting ends of rails in a track,and also the inside and top faces of fish-plates, angle-bars, orsplice-bars, as clearly shown in Fig. 2.

Serial No. 345,348. (No model.)

The thickness and weight and length of the shim may vary; but the shapemust conform to the contour of the track-rails to which it is to beapplied.

E is the vertical and lower portion of the shim, adapted to overlie theweb of a rail, and E is the top and horizontal part, adapted to engagethe under side of the ball of the T head of a rail at a joint or at anyportion of the rail that may need to be reinforced.

Longitudinal movement of the shim E relative to the splice-bars can beprevented by allowing the vertical portion to extend downward, so as tocome between the interior bolts 0 at the joint, while the overlappingportion E comes between the balls of the rails and their supports.

I claim as my invention As an article of manufacture, a metal shim forrailway-rail joints, adapted to beplaced between the balls of rails anda rail-splice, in the manner set forth, for the purposes stated.

WILLIAM F. GOULD.

Witnesses:

S. 0. SWEET, Y THOMAS G. ORWIG.

